Copa America 2011 Argentina

What is it with the Argentine 100 peso note? It is worth the equivalent of 20 euro and yet any attempt to change one or ‘break’ one very often prompts panic in Argentina. Paying for a hostel costing 30 peso – no chance! Lunch, 15 peso – are you joking! Taxi, 40 peso – driver asks to keep the change. Then I decided to pop in to the country’s biggest multinational supermarket chain, Carrefour, and break one of my hundreds for a bottle of drinking water…only to be almost marched off the premises by the supermarket’s security. You’d understand it if the cost of living was low in Argentina but prices here are generally at the lower European price levels you find in the peripheral countries such as Portugal, Turkey and the Baltic states. Can you imagine there being panic every time you tried to break into a 20 euro note in Portugal?!